


Becoming the Mask

by Bushwah



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst and Humor, M/M, Meta, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 13:56:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20065141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bushwah/pseuds/Bushwah
Summary: The brilliant concept (popularized, as far as I'm aware, by our very own simaetha) of Sauron doing what he does because he's lacking in emotional and social skills and taking this out on others, taken to its logical/self-parodical extreme.Or: Sauron betrays Eregion slowly. Each step feels perfectly logical and reasonable. Nobody really wants war.(Nobody ever really wants war.)





	Becoming the Mask

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [transitions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17018829) by [simaetha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/simaetha/pseuds/simaetha). 

> This is a genre that I've been calling "fic-shaped meta" -- the tense, person, and formatting conventions are mostly those of meta, but the narrative focus conventions are mostly those of fic. The AO3 archives both, so this hybrid form should be fine.
> 
> The "inspired by" thing won't let you specify a chapter, but the chapter that inspired this is specifically https://archiveofourown.org/works/17018829/chapters/40011915.

Mairon really hates to think of himself as being anything less than perfectly self-controlled, on his side <strike>and possibly Melkor’s</strike> and no one else’s thank you very much, and otherwise without A Feeling in sight.

So I’m somewhat partial to the idea that his repentance/“fair form” as Annatar, while outwardly sincere and even inwardly sincere all the way on the inside, involved a fair amount of self-directed performative insistence that yes, he really is capital-E Evil, and of course he’s just building up a cover until <strike>Melkor comes back</strike> the political situation renders it convenient for him to reveal himself again as the second most evil being ever to exist, muahaha.

Half without realizing it, maybe, he taught a backdoor-equipped version of Ringcraft to his colleagues in the <strike>grad school of Middle-Earth</strike> Gwaith-i-Mírdain. Perhaps the first time, even, it was an accident or mistake. After that... well, it’s not like anyone else was likely to notice it, or be in a position to exploit it; he might as well keep this secret, this potential for power, to himself.

He’s not going to work against _his own interests_. Having more power is never bad. (It’s an elegant flaw, really. No being not divine would ever notice it, and it has no appreciable impact on the functioning of the ring itself. <strike>So why is he tempted to fix it?</strike>

When he realizes he’s actually falling in love with Celebrimbor, it’s a wakeup call of sorts. He really is becoming normal. Losing the independence, the power, the detached grace he’s cultivated for so long. At that point, making the One might even be a panic reaction—a sort of reassurance that he hasn’t lost his touch entirely. An intellectual exercise cum manipulation project that puts one more secret between him and the object of his affection and widens the gap between them. If I remember correctly, he didn’t intend anyone to know he’d made it even in canon.

...and Celebrimbor understandably and not entirely incorrectly jumps to “he’s been Sauron all along, and he’s back to his old ways.” Leaving Mairon (in his own mind) no choice but to carry through and become Sauron in truth.  
  
(If the One was primarily a theoretical exercise, it would explain why it’s got such weird powers. Like... it can make forbidding fortresses?? _Very Angband. So torture dungeon. Much evil._

In this ’verse Mairon also aggressively avoids any suggestion that he might, perhaps, be imitating Melkor a little too much, because that would be admitting that he did in fact have A Feeling, and that would be the most unbearable thing to him.)


End file.
